Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
That's what I'm a-doing; only, as you may say, I'm walking off it." As he spoke he raised his leg up, holding on to the attap roof the while, gave two or three sharp kicks, and threw his leg off the spear-shaft and let it fall free upon the slope, where he lay now upon his back shaking with laughter. "Oh dear! Oh dear!" he said. "What a game! Pinned down like a specimen! I can't stop it.
The prahu was a flattish-bottomed boat about twenty-two and a half feet long by six and a half feet broad, with a bamboo gridiron flooring resting on the gunwale for the greater part of its length. This was covered for seven feet in the middle by a low, circular roof, thatched with attap.
A faint cry escaped from the young officer's lips as he grasped at the brittle attap mat, which gave way at once. He slipped over the ragged mat which formed the eaves, and the next moment, crack, crack, crack, he was hanging feet downwards, and then fell heavily in a cloud of dust bump upon the trampled earth, in company with a snake about six feet long, which began to glide rapidly away.
"Oh Dula!" exclaimed Minnie; and she uttered a few words in the Malay tongue that sent the woman rustling past the cut boughs beneath the attap awning, to return directly and gladden the eyes of Peter with a basket containing a heap of bananas and a couple of native-made cakes. "Ah!" sighed Peter. "Don't they look lovely in the moonlight! Tlat!" he added, with a hearty smack of his lips.
Mahmoud sometimes executes wonderful capers, the strange, wild, half-human face of the siamang peers down from the roof with a half-trustful, half-suspicious expression; the retriever lies on the floor with his head on his paws, sleeping with one eye open, always on the watch for a coveted word of recognition from his master, or a yet more coveted opportunity of going out with him; tiffin and dinner are silently served in the veranda recess at long intervals; the sentries at the door are so silently changed that one fancies that the motionless blue turbans and scarlet coats contain always the same men; in the foreground the river flows silently, and the soft airs which alternate are too feeble to stir the over-shadowing palm-fronds or rustle the attap of the roof.
Neat, well-kept walks led up to the fort and the resident's house, which daily grew brighter and more picturesque, with its ornamented reed-woven walls, and carefully thatched roof of attap.
He was calling as even Rudolph knew on the strange god across the sea, Saviour of the Children of the West, not to forget his nameless and lonely servant. Rudolph groaned aloud, rose, and had parted the curtain to run out and fall upon them all, when suddenly, close at hand and sharp in the general din, there burst a quick volley of rifleshots. Splinters flew from the attap walls.
"The posts are to be of polished nebong" he was saying, "the wood-work of maranti wood from Pahang; and there is to be a cote, ever so cunningly woven of green and yellow bamboo, for your ring-doves, under the attap of the great eaves above the door." She turned wearily toward her lover, and the bright look faded from her comely face.
Tom Long was prevailed upon to mount the table, where he bowed again and again as the men cheered; when, as a lull came in the cheering, Billy Mustard, whose fiddle had been musically whispering to itself in answer to the well-drawn bow, suddenly made himself heard in the strain of "Rule Britannia," which was sung in chorus with vigour, especially when the singers declared that Britons never, never, NEVER should be slaves; which rang out far over the attap roofs of the drowsy campong.
These native huts look so clean and fresh when first put up, the straw-coloured attap walls and green leaf roofs are so agreeable to the eye. They quickly turn hay colour and then get discoloured by the wood smoke. Except that we were at times rather short of food, we enjoyed our mountain retreat very much.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking